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Inter-parliamentary Scrutiny: EUC Report

My Lords, this Motion endorses the seventh report of your Lordships’ European Union Committee, which I chair. The proposal sets out the arrangements which we would like to put in place for the inter-parliamentary scrutiny of the common foreign, security and defence policy of the European Union, following the winding up of the Western European Union, and therefore its Assembly. The proposal is in the same terms as one approved by the other place, on the basis of a report from its Foreign Affairs Select Committee, on 10 March. I am grateful to that committee and its chairman, and to the House of Commons European Scrutiny and Defence Committees for their informal co-operation, which has allowed the committees of both Houses to come to a common position on the matter. It might be of assistance to the House if I briefly set out the context for the Motion before the House today. As many noble Lords will know, the member states of the Western European Union decided this time last year that the organisation should be dissolved with effect from the middle of 2011. I need not tell this House that the Western European Union and its Assembly has played a valuable and unique role giving international parliamentary oversight of European security and defence matters. About 30 years ago, in the 1970s, I myself served in the Assembly and was a chairman of its defence committee, so I know its work in that period very well. More recently, as the first head of the Western European Union Institute for Security Studies, which was co-located in the Assembly building, I have seen how many noble Lords have contributed actively to the work of the Assembly over the years, and I pay full tribute to the important work which they have done. The question now before us is: what should be done to replace it? The inter-governmental nature of decision-making in the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy of the European Union means that parliamentary scrutiny of those policies should not be left to the European Parliament. The significance of the CFSP and the CSDP activities is that those are decisions made by the European Council, which is of course made up of Foreign Ministers from the member states, who are held to account by their national Parliaments. It is therefore important that national Parliaments should be aware of and share in considering those matters at a European level. As we state in our report, the European Union Committee is of the view that it is vital that some forum for inter-parliamentary debate on these matters is maintained in the post-WEU period, with national Parliaments taking the lead. The issue of how the forum should be structured is the principal subject for discussion at next week's conference of European Union Speakers’ in Brussels. As is indicated in the Motion, we ask for the House’s endorsement of the committee’s approach today, so that when, next Monday, I will be representing the Lord Speaker, I will have a mandate to agree to new arrangements. The proposals are set out in full in our report, but I shall refer only to the principal points. We propose that the successor body should be a European Union inter-parliamentary conference on foreign affairs, defence and security, with the acronym of COFADS. It should, "““secure continued inter-parliamentary scrutiny of this area of EU activity””," and, "““would not be an additional or autonomous institution””." In fact, it would replace the current biennial meetings of the chairs of the foreign affairs and defence committees of national Parliaments. Therefore, it, "““would minimise costs, while adding value to the work that each national parliament does on its own in this field””." Under our proposal, all the European Union national Parliaments and the European Parliament, but only those Parliaments, would have full membership of the COFADS body. Parliaments of official European Union candidate members would be automatically invited as observers—that is, Croatia, Macedonia, Iceland and, importantly, Turkey. We make it clear in our proposal that it would be possible for other countries to be invited on the decision of the presidency. In speaking to the matter next week, I shall of course refer particularly to the case of the other European members of NATO, especially Norway, which has made strong representations to us on this subject. Delegations from each country would consist of a maximum of six delegates per Parliament, including the European Parliament. That would be three per Chamber in the case of a bicameral Parliament such as our own. The proposal is that the new body, COFADS, would meet once in every presidency; that is, twice a year. We propose that the meetings should as a general rule be held in Brussels or in the presidency country; but we feel that there would be some advantage in it not necessarily meeting in the European Parliament, to make quite clear that it is a distinct body of national Parliaments rather than something else. Organisational responsibility would be borne by the Parliaments of the troika countries—the country holding the presidency, the country about to hold the presidency and the country that had just held the presidency. They would be responsible for providing the secretariat function with support from the secretariat that already exists in Brussels and services COSAC, the conference of the national European committees of the Parliaments of the European Union. This is the position of the European Union Committee and it has already been endorsed by the other place; and, as I said, next week I will go to Brussels for the Speakers’ conference, and if the House agrees to the Motion on the Order Paper, it will be the position of both Houses of the UK Parliament. The Speakers’ conference makes its decisions on the basis of consensus. Finding a consensus in advance of the conference has so far not been totally straightforward. However, I am pleased that a significant majority of other European Union national Parliaments broadly support the position outlined in your Lordships’ committee’s report. On 24 February, the Belgian Parliament, as host of the forthcoming Speakers’ conference, circulated a draft proposal for the future of the CFSP and the CSDP scrutiny—noble Lords may have seen it in the very useful debate pack which the Library prepared for today’s debate. The proposal was a significant way away from the position that I have outlined today. It envisaged, in particular, a significantly greater role for the European Parliament than we would be prepared to accept, notably with the European Parliament holding a permanent co-presidency of the conference and providing up to a third of the delegates but not providing the secretariat. In response to the proposal, I wrote jointly with Richard Ottaway, the chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, to the Speakers of the two Belgian Houses. We set out in our letter the positions of the two committees, and I am very pleased to say that many other national Parliaments have made similar representations. The Belgian presidency reflected on those responses and issued a revised proposal last Friday, which is also in the Library’s debate pack. It has obviously taken serious account of the representations made by the national Parliaments and the revised proposal is heading in the right direction. We should be grateful for that. Thanks to its efforts, an agreement on a proposal next week, which will only be possible on the basis of consensus, now looks a more likely prospect. However, there remain in the Belgian proposal some areas of concern. Most seriously, the Belgians suggest that the national parliamentary delegations should be limited to four members. In order to allow proper party political balance and Select Committee representation, we remain firmly of the view that delegations should be allowed up to six members per Parliament. Secondly, in our view, the European Parliament is still given too great a proportion of the delegates. In the revised proposal, the proportion has been reduced from a third of the total membership to a quarter of the total size of the national parliamentary delegations. Although there are other matters in the Belgian revised compromise proposal—such as the location of meetings—which also diverge somewhat from the intended UK position, it is these two issues on which we have the strongest views and on which we have been supported most strongly by most other national Parliaments. If the House agrees to our report today, I will argue strongly for the position in the report, and I will feel unable to agree to a proposal that does not come significantly closer to the UK Parliament's position than the revised Belgian proposal on these two points of substance. As is clear from the report before the House, the European Union Committee's clear view is that the continuation of an inter-parliamentary forum is necessary to ensure that the demise of the WEU does not leave a serious gap in scrutiny. Should we have needed reminding, recent events in north Africa and the Middle East have demonstrated the fundamental importance of discussing and perhaps sometimes reaching agreement on common foreign, security and defence policies. The WEU Assembly will meet for the last time in June. It is therefore wholly desirable that the European Union Speakers’ Conference next week can reach a decision so that the new forum can become operational later this year. I am optimistic that, with further compromise, such a decision can be reached, and I will do everything I can to secure it. The committee's position is clearly set out in the report. I believe that it is a sensible and appropriate response to the winding up of the WEU Assembly and, if agreed to, will make a good framework for inter-parliamentary scrutiny for years to come. I therefore commend it to the House. I beg to move.